#tgtakes

[tipsygnostalgy]

i cant believe i came across this post authentically so here goes

the thing about these two characters and motherhood is that the entities that they're a "mother" towards can be vaguely separated into passive and active entities. for example, roxy as a child takes care of both chess people and mutini, and neither play a very active "role" in general—in mutini's case, she straight up creates her without any sacrifice either. so when the matriorb (another passive entity, though the mother grub isn't) comes along, she knows exactly how to make it and exactly how to take care of it.

kanaya as a child tries to take care of vriska fucking serket,. she is also notably burdened by the task of motherhood—she's the only one who can/will at first tend the mother grub, then pacify serket (not true, but she thinks so!), then by re-creating the matriorb. the entire fate of trollkind rests on her hands, and she struggles, because who wouldn't? every moment she's nurtured someone reads partially as motherhood, but also as her "calling", and because every single time she's responded to those callings things required sacrifices (emotional or whatbenot) on her end, she gets the matriorb and assumes this would also require her to give something up. but nope. "it was like this whole quasi intellectu-motional SAGA or something for me to figure out how to make this freaking egg" on roxy's end (note how it requires intellect, like mutini's conception), but that's it. yet still this is going to be a lot of work to do—roxy points out that in her opinion, "you shouldnt have needed to worry about makin the thing" & that "it will be challenging enough […] hatching it and tending to all the stuff that comes next." she admits that she isn't qualified to take care of the matriorb/nuture it to mother-grub status at this moment, which makes sense considering she's practically only raised passive entities. kanaya's still responsible for her race, but this time, what's notably different is that:

she does have help if she needs it, and that help (if i recall) comes in the form of rose as well as the countless other friends she's made along the way. it's sickening and domestic and a fantastic developmental arc for her that she still is a mother—she still responds to the call, yet this time (like op pointed out) it doesn't (and shouldn't) require sacrifice. it does, however, need help from others, and kanaya's got plenty of people around to assist her in the efforts.

coughs.

(how old do you think momlonde was when she found out she'd have to bring up an active child that would end the world unless she raised her correctly how much did you think she sacrificed, and how much help do you think she had haha fuck)

motherhood in homestuck is so compelling to me like... ok 4lph4kidz gave me the courage to post about my kanaya miscarriage thoughts but the idea of giving kanaya, a character who was nurturing and motherlike from the start, a metaphorical miscarriage (eridan killing her through her stomach, destroying the matriorb, kanaya being held back from defending herself bc of the matriorb, etc) and having that haunt her deeply and personally is fuckin INSANE... and she becomes a vampire and a vampire's existence is inherently selfish, and she must consume other beings to survive. a mother's existence is physically selfless, as in, she literally loses part of herself... but like. the way she gets the matriorb back doesnt require sacrifice either. so many things that are created in homestuck require something to be destoryed (a new empress, a new universe, a new cherub) but roxy, homestuck's not perfect but most earnest mother from human society, literally does not destroy anything to create a new matriorb? kanaya literally says :

and then she assumes that to create such a gift, roxy would need to go through a huge, sacrificial trial, but:

she's surprised that roxy just... used her void powers to make life out of nothing. i think this being one of the few times that creation doesnt require sacrifice in homestuck is so important. to be a mother (specifically in the context of two people who WANT to be mothers) should not require sacrifice. it is an achievement and an honor for both of them and that makes me go CRAZY

[tipsygnostalgy]

DirkJake & Beauvoir: An Existential Analysis

posting this here again because i am insufferable and this is currently my magnum opus 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vTIEpH7wYe9_PWNu7sqk_HlmjpEnNMkDzA9S2QdaJp4rXi6_O2fovQ3RB0fJ6y0aTjNgQDU9E76Bbem/pub

jk i’m working on something about the kid guardians right now!! not all the ideas are there but it’s rotating in my brain very often so it’ll come at some point 

[tipsygnostalgy]

mitski album announced so i have thoughts about rose lalonde.

in MY opinion rose lalonde grew up as such a reactive little spitfuck because she was never reacted to as a child. nothing she did got an active response from shit-faced-drunk mom, so she learned to escalate and lash out and verbally annihilate people to prompt something from them (see: grimdark, see: suicide threats). she pokes and prods because it will keep them engaged, because genuine sentiment can be rejected but nobody likes to be mildly condescended towards. the delusion with which she approaches the "one uppmanship" game with mom, and the amount of attachment she has to it, stems from the fact that it's a stable reaction. every time she makes her move, she anxiously waits for the next ten days to see if and how mom will react. every time mom makes hers, it's this cathartic adrenaline rush and reassurance that she is worth at least that much to her mother. she has learned to sustain herself off practically nothing, grasping at any emotional thread and evidence that she is a daughter to her, and later even recognizes this insanity as her mother's best shot at love, just like how mom might have grasped at grandpa harley. to the core she is her mother's child. killing myself.

[tipsygnostalgy]

On Grandpa/Jake Harley

you know shits about to be long as fuck when i add the keep reading line like four lines in lol

anyway anon all this is 4 u!! feel free to talk ab this by just tagging instead of rb i dont want 2k words to be posted over n over again

Grandpa Harley being some kind of pseudo-omnipotent deity figure who somehow figures out/guesses (my money's on guesses) extremely intricate details about the game and does everything he can to make things go right is something that we don't talk about enough. It's one of the only plans in Homestuck made that are orchestrated entirely by one person then ends up going right. It's that pattern of hoping that the cards fall into place in the right way (unless we're taking the Grandpa is practically God perspective, which is interesting in its own right)—but notably, he makes a lot of preparations beforehand. He's so... active. It fascinates me. I'll have to talk about this on the Jake English as Jesus Christ trope post (it's coming, I swear, brainrot's a bitch) but the sheer amount of things he does is astounding. But, lo and behold, he wasn't always like this. Cue: the Skaianet Systems Incorporated texts.

Quick note about all that. A very large portion of the things Hussie wrote for SSI is 1) dubiously canon, and 2) a bunch of anti-semitic bullshit that he probably never should have fucking released to the public, at least not like that. Like, holy shit, keep that and your weird comments about sexual slavery in your Notes app dude, we don't need to hear it. For this reason I suggest reading the actual material with extreme caution. Cool? Cool. On with it. Here's a lil' review of Jake Harley before the session.

Funny enough, Jake had always been kind of pathetic in the Beta session as well.

So Skaianet was actually established by HIC as a front for laundering technology from Alternia and Sburbian ruins. The key of SN was not to actually develop tech, but make it look like it so that people will believe you when your company just re-defined gravity for the hundredth time. Jake has to play the "famous genius shtick," but he doesn't do so well. When he fully inherits SN at 21 he runs it hands-on, and "believes" his success is due to hard work and diligence. He also "believes SN is now a considerably more distinct entity from Crocker Corp, and his leadership of the company is a result of his hard work and competence. Neither is true." He's manipulated by his at-the-time boyfriend (Charlie Chaplin, somehow) into letting a rebel force into the Crocker manor, though the effort is ultimately thwarted by HIC.

He also has a disastrous love life. His relationship at sixteen with Chaplin consists of Chaplin finding him "obnoxious and thoughtless" though he "can't seem to quit him," and Jake ultimately "[toys] with his heart, and [abandons] him." This later (much later, think decades) manifests into something way worse when Chaplin appears in an outing Jake has with one of his families (he's had many, though not at once) and tries to kill Jake for not just his involvement with SN/HIC, but for breaking his heart as well. Notably, in this scene, upon having a gun aimed at him Jake reflexively hides behind his wife, who ends up being shot in his stead. He's out-strifed so badly that he'd have died in the jungle (oh yeah he takes his wife and 5yo son to a jungle btw) if Chaplin didn't have a divine intervention moment afterwards.

At 32 he also abandons his post at SN for fucking around Europe. "[H]e's out exploring and adventuring, completely oblivious to whatever's going on in Europe. He hops from site to site, looking for Sburbian ruins to plunder." One, the "whatever's going on" is WW2, again, somehow. Two, he has a daughter there that he "takes custody of, apprentices as an adventurer, and takes all over the place on his adventures." When he takes her to Hawaii she ditches him because she's sick of her "douchebag dad." And there's that Jude family too, obviously.

Oh, and all the Beta guardians are also meteor babies. It's how Jake ends up finding Dirk and Roxy to begin with—he sets them up with trust funds in Texas and New York so that they can be of use to SN later, though whether he knew their importance in the larger context of SBURB is unclear.

All caught up? Great.

The exact details of how every event goes down aren't as important as the lessons you can draw from it, namely: Jake Harley is an absolute fucking mess of a human being. He continuously creates families—notice how he keeps having children with his wive—then is bereaved of them. A few times he abandons them, a few times they abandon him, and sometimes they get killed by your ex-boyfriend. It's a neat little insight into just how neck-deep these commitment issues lie, but it's also fun to consider that he seeks it so desperately. This man has on record has had:

one wife be shot dead in front of him

a son who was technically kidnapped from him by the man who almost beat him to death (his ex-boyfriend)

a daughter ditch him in the middle of hawaii for being a shitty dad

a daughter (joey claire) be teleported by portal to alternia, who hated jake so much she took her dead mom's last name

said dead mom/wife whom upon her death leaves her children "Semi Orphans" because he just straight up ditches his kids to go work on hellmurder island

probably more

And he still considers himself a grandfather to Jade. TBF, I guess the easier way of explaining it is that it's simply the natural explanation—they are sort of related after all. But considering that he once sired an illegitimate daughter and not only took her into custody but tried to raise her as his liege, I still find it the fact that he tries over and over again to the point of rending the family meaningless interesting. I think it's viable that Jake wanted a family—not one where he and Jane were raised by HIC and poorly—but a real one. His attempt to raise that first daughter to mirror his habits reflects the way HIC raised Beta Jane to mirror her. Yet after relationship after relationship goes horribly wrong, this desire fades into a kind of apathetic unsureness to the point where this is what he says about his last "full" family, the Harley-Claires:

He's been making good headway on his quest for the mysterious island in the pacific. Once everything is taken care of here, he'll leave this family behind and set up shop on that island permanently. That's when the real work begins. The discoveries on that island will finally unite him with the destiny he's been in search of his whole life.

Two things of note. One, his first recorded instance of permanently setting up jackshit anywhere is at first with SkaiaNet then at Hellmurder island. Both locations share that theme of "destiny" in common—notice how he considers SN divorced from Crockercorp because of his efforts and tries to make the place overall less HIC-controlled, but ultimately fails. And sure, he later achieves this kind of destiny by having his Sburb plan go "right" but before this not a single "plan" he established went correctly. Jake in either timeline isn't a guy who regularly makes plans for multiple efforts—they zero in on one goal that appears as part of their calling and makes it happen, damn it. To him, that's a success. Whether he "actually does" is up for interpretation.

See, HIC actually wanted the Beta kids to play the game. She'd been using the Beta session as a "testing" timeline, knowing which events and people to avoid and keep in mind so that she can play everything out exactly the way she wants it to. Part of the reason why Crockertier Jane was so firmly for marrying Jake and having children was because that had been HIC's idea of what Beta Jake's purpose was once he landed on a Meteor (after B!Jane). So he saw the "big picture" in a bigger way than quite literally anyone else, but it still isn't enough, at least not in the way he thought it might be at first.

Prior to his discoveries on the island, Jake has no idea this will result in some kids using the software he's unearthing, which will destroy all life on Earth. Nor does he have any idea that those kids will be using this same software to reboot the universe with different starting conditions, thus ending this "trial run" timeline for HIC, and giving her a fresh start. Exactly as she planned.

This implies there is some moment that Grandpa Harley realized that everything he was doing would end up playing into the HIC's hands anyway. This also implies that he carried out those actions regardless, Hoping that Jade would someday win the game in the process. Are you seeing the parallel for my interpretation of Ult. Jake yet? Fuck.

What was the moment he realized? Did he power through anyway, hoping there was a bright light for Jade at the end of this all?

He's also a hoarder. He keeps items and objects instead of people. He hangs onto the past to the point where he's seemingly unable to let go of it—trophies, guns, artifacts—but throughout the entire Harley Manor there is not a single picture of his families. And that's where his dolls come in—dolls are just human enough but not too human, you can control them however you'd like yet delude yourself they are company. I'm not saying all doll-enjoyers are this way, but the specifics in which Grandpa (and Bro to an extent, for that matter) interacts with his dolls makes me believe he's turning them into pseudo-human entities because at the end of the day he again craves company. But, unlike Jake, Grandpa Harley's had a lifetime of experience reinforcing over and over again that this will never happen with a real person. And fuck, don't even get me started on the taxidermy—it's the very act of taking something, bereaving it of life and subjectivity, then keeping it for yourself. You can see how this has even affected Jade in the sense that she thinks about her taxidermied dead Grandpa (who she taxidermied himself, by the way) like a living, breathing person. And Jadebot? A robotic, perfect replica of his granddaughter, designed to monitor her at all times instead of him? And the parallels that has to Brobot. Ughghgh.

Also, quick digression. You know how Beta Dad & Mom were on the Battlefield? And how Grandpa landed just to recover Jade's dead dream body, then left Dad and Mom behind. Sorry, I'm just not normal about that at all. How did we collectively miss the sheer tragedy of that situation, God, I wonder what Roxy was thinking. Digression over.

All in all, what these files tell me is that the way Jake was written was no way accidental. Yeah he got fucked over in the Alpha session, yeah he's tragic, but he's tragic for a reason that I ultimately appreciate even as I clutch my heart and dramatically fall over from pain. He knows just enough about the meta-reality to cause feelings of absurdity but powers through it; he's supposed to be put in seemingly insurmountable situations and emerge, through one way or the other, victorious. He's supposed to have the strangest relationship known to man regarding other people and, as a result, try to find compromise between the two halves of "complete fuck-all isolation" and "the company of any developed adult human ever." He's goal-oriented only when it presents a clear-cut destiny to him, when he can see the significance of it, and otherwise floats around doing fuck-all in this world. This goal is, most of the time, people: Dirk for LE Jake, and Jade for Harley. It's also fun insight into where Jake could potentially end up going—as this post by Cooper already pointed out, Ult. Dirk's actions mirror Bro's need to micromanage and control everything in his life to the point where he, much alike Bro, secludes himself in an apartment while running his inner machinations unknown to most others. I wouldn't be surprised if Jake ends up in a similar way to Grandpa, giving his all to a dreary situation and maintaining Hope through it with the desire that it'll eventually succeed.

It would also be fun if his Hopes only came true after his death.

Alright, analysis over, everyone clock out. Good work, people. [Vaguely gestures to the reader.]

[tipsygnostalgy]

[Now incoming: takes and advice that noooooooo8ody fucking asked for!]

I think the reason why "bad people don't care if they're bad" is appealing to so many people is because it's easy. It's convenient. You get to choke back the fear of being a shitty person with some pretty solid, albeit ostensible, logic. Nobody likes grappling with the fact that they're capable of doing harm. Nobody wants to be a bad person. But if you look at things from a purely logical perspective, it seems far more likely that you're a bad person than you're a good one, because it's a lot easier to become aware of your capacity for "bad' than the other side of that coin.

Bad people can care if they're bad. Shit, just look at our favorite Bojack, Horseman. To most (and more importantly, to himself) he's a horrible person, and he struggles immensely in the process of coming to terms with that idea. The sentiment counts for something, sure, but it's not a catch-all work-all. There's no such thing in morality. The answer is uncertain. Subjective, if you will. Good people can do bad things, and bad people can do good things; the line between what exactly makes someone "good" or "bad" was never meant to be rigidly defined for anyone.

Whether you are a bad person or not is a question you can only answer for yourself, if at all. A desire to be good doesn't necessarily make you good, and a capacity for evil can indicate a capacity for kindness. The "advice"? Be patient. Be critical and kind. Self-awareness is really fucking easy to blend with self-hatred (this is for all you Dirk Strider types out there), and the fact that you're questioning this is a good sign, at least in my books. Try to work out OP's questions from the ground up, and know that "I have no fucking idea" is a valid answer. Do take your time. Don't try to fit into some arbitrary metric a bunch of dead Greek guys developed two thousand years ago, though. No matter what your answer is, someone out there will disagree, and likely for a valid reason, but that's okay. It happens. I'd even dare over-generalize and say it's life.

"am i a bad person?"

helpful: what is a bad person? how do you define that? what makes you think you might be one? is this potentially a form of black-and-white thinking for you? what purpose does this serve? are you living in line with your values right now? is there anything you want to be different? do you have a habit of being too harsh on yourself?

what the internet has seemingly landed on: bad people don't care if they're bad people!

[tipsygnostalgy]

good morning

Been thinking about this concept for a bit now. LE Jake wants a happy ending and he wants it with Ult Dirk. His method of audience-defiance isn't necessarily defiance as much as it's symbiotic "control"—he doesn't care who's voyuering him so long as they give him something he's happy with, and he understands the need for a story to be kept alive by having it hard-earned. This doesn't mean he lacks standard, or that he's unaware of the potential that his story will go the Candy route, but it does mean he's fundamentally different from Dirk in the sense that so long as the "author/Narrative" puts them together at the end, he's fine. The ending Dirk's looking for doesn't exist, because in his eyes, a relevant ending is one where he's dead and it's out of his hands. He's played his part in continuing the story, it's up to Davebot's crew now, but at least he gave them something to work off of later. It's that classic Dirk method of I want the best for you and I'll do whatever it takes to get that combined with I specifically know what that looks like, so it's my way or kill yourself. Jake is trying to get this motherfucker to microdose on Hope through various means of manipulation often enough that he'll cave and just accept his ending. No villains, no heroes, just people making it work. But this, again, effectively places him in the position of Jake Christ even if he's the last thing from cut out for it—he can't demonstrate his flaws because Dirk will find them, all on his own, because this is a hard sell to begin with and Jake knows that. So from there it's not will he cave, but when, and much alike their original dynamic Dirk's testing the waters with him, seeing how far he can push and how much he can resist being ensnared before it fucks Jake up. In some strange way he's trying to break Jake out of that Happy Ending mindset too, prove that he's right, there's no such fucking thing for people like them. And they do all this without actually talking to each other, because of course they don't, they're DirkJake.

What's hard from a story standpoint is selling this arguable woobification while maintaining the fact that these two are very much assholes to each other. They're both trying to get their way, not by coaxing and communicating, but by pissing each other off and saying shut up and kill yourself and destroying each other in ways that is the most effective—Jake by throwing Hope at Dirk's feet, and Dirk by refusing it. Funny enough, for me, them being physically violent to each other is kind of a neutral ground they've settled on—they both know the real damage can be done by talking. Dirk doesn't tell Jake he knows what he's trying to do by inviting him to a dance, he just stops at "fuck you" and strifes him instead. I could talk about them for hours. Eughgh.

[tipsygnostalgy]

if you actively dislike jane or jade but you're a huge fan of the striders/think they're soooo much more complex compared to the others kids i'm fucking frowning at you

[tipsygnostalgy]

Your name is TG. Your pronouns are THEY/THEM/ANY. You are a HOMESTUCK, but that should have been relatively obvious from your handle, which is universal across your TUMBLR, TWITTER, and SPOTIFY alike. You like to consider yourself an AMATEUR ESSAYIST, AI RESEARCHER, FUTURE PHILOSOPHER(???), and AUTHOR of two entire fics, both of which you love like your own child.

You have a knack for CODING, some CASUAL WRITING, and conjuring HOT TO LUKEWARM TAKES regarding everything you know more than three minutes about. This happens to include topics such as DIRK, JAKE, and the KIDS/their GUARDIANS, who you regularly fuck around with and find out more than you ever wished to.

Your TAGS are pretty simple. #tgtakes is for analysis on ALL levels; #tgfics is for your fanfiction/recommendations; #the lovers is for DirkJake-specific analysis, usually regarding post-canon; #dirkjaketentialism is how DirkJake specifically relates to EXISTENTIALISM.

You also have a WEBSITE, where all this and more is presented in pretty pretty PINK.

[tipsygnostalgy]

Fantastic piece. Thoughts below.

I wouldn't know shit about Homestuck's perception of Jake overtime, but I think the unhinged approach has to do with the fact that for a grand majority of the comic Jake exists in the "middle." He, like most of the others kids, is pathetic and a little dumb and an extremely complicated character that doesn't get nearly enough attention nor development over the course of the plot; he's a mixture of wanting attention and hating it, never quite being enough for others, vacillating between two attitudes towards life and unable to do shit about it by virtue of the Narrative. Jake English can't be a fully fledged Hope player in canon, nor can he be one in the Epilogues, because to canonically have that deus ex machina is to do a worst disservice to the narrative than any fanfic will ever achieve. But he has his "good" moments, as he does his "bad" ones—I like to consider it a spectrum of behavior that nobody really knows where he falls under.

And that gets really fucking annoying after a little bit, sorry dude. Or it doesn't, and it's people wanting to try the other way. We've seen him in the middle, we've seen him way off the pathetic scale (Candy Jake, maybe?), so why not the other way around? Everyone likes to see a God, Jake just happens to provide a perfect medium to write one with without it becoming ridiculous.

About the audience, though. I'm actually not sure if Jake operates for the destruction of the audience, at least long-term. At some point you become so self-aware that you realize being self-aware (read: self-hating) about your every action is kind of a loser thing to do, and that might be the case for Jake. He's always putting on shows and fronts at various levels—for the audience, for his friends, for himself—but he doesn't necessarily hate it. It's the fact that people see him only as that front and nothing more that fucks him over, and why the notion of "knowing" is so important to me in the context of both Dirk and Jake. Dirk's approach is that if we have to be controlled, then I'd rather it be me than anyone else; I think Jake's would be that, as someone who has been a puppet for most of his life but knows damn well half his friends have been putting on performances as well, in some sense we're all controlled no matter what scale that's at, so why actively make yourself unhappy? Why put the blood on your hands? Sure, a Narrative controls the characters, an author controls the Narrative, but writing doesn't always go this way: countless authors describe their writing process as simply transcripts of what the characters are doing, of them having their own agency. Is Jake not a primary example of the author not being God? Isn't he being a disruptive character with something dangerously close to agency in Dirk's Narrative at this exact second just by being here, talking to him? Why would you chase something so meaningless when you could simply exist, and so long as you're seen for the person you are to the people you care about, that's all that matters? I mean, it's not like Dirk's using this power for happiness anyway—it's just control. And that's a little silly. Characters have more influence over the story than Dirk might assume, though if you really want to look at it from the "they have no choice" angle, you can. But in a fight that's turtles all the way down, trying to find the Ultimate answer instead of, like, being happy? Shrugs.

Fun thought and more of a headcanon than anything, but I like to imagine that Ult. Jake picks out an author for each story. He roulettes around them like browsing a fucking catalog until he finds one that does something he likes and he tosses the Narrative over to them, watching the trend spread and expand and knowing the task of Observer/God is out of his hands now. Or maybe my days of analyzing Ink Sans and the evolution of fanculture for a story are getting to me again, I don't know. But yeah, thank you very much for this work.

Hi Tony i want to ask something of you. In fanon more often than not i see Jake becoming slightly more unhinged and unnerving as he gets older. Do you think this would hpapen canonically? Or are all these fanartsits and writers just projecting what they want from jake on jake

This isn't a hate on it by the way, I just realised the other day I see more often the idea of Jake becoming more unnerving as he gets older alongside Dirk and that i'd accepted it and I'm unsure if its canonically viable or not.

I actually think the nature of Jake is that people project what they want on to him-- be you an author, an audience, or a character within the text. It's an interesting concept because Jake is a character who is never afforded free will and even in fanfiction and transformative works made to give Jake free will, he's still a character doing an author's bidding ultimately.

There's a bit in Meat that discusses this with Calliope and Dirk iirc. Calliope wants Jake to have free will, but Dirk argues that Jake is incapable of free will. And truly, even on a metatextual level, the existence of a narrative voice renders basically everyone, but especially Jake, incapable of free will within a narrative.

I don't know if you've seen Revolutionary Girl Utena, but there's an exchange in Utena that I believe they're referencing intertextually here between Utena and Touga about Anthy. Utena insists that Anthy does not want to be the rose bride, and Anthy confirms this. But when Touga defeats Utena and takes Anthy as the rose bride himself, Anthy claims being the rose bride is all she's ever wanted. Touga then says Anthy is incapable of free will and her expressions of "wanting to be a normal girl" when with Utena were just Utena projecting her own wants on to Anthy and claiming them to be free will.

(pinch of salt, I haven't rewatched Utena in a few years, but this is how I remember the scene)

In many ways, this is what Calliope, and us as authors, do to Jake, and what in text Dirk is criticising as a concept. He's like, well I'm projecting my desires and wants on to Jake and you say that's bad but at least I'm being honest about it. I'm treating Jake like a puppet, but that's all he's ever going to be anyway.

Er. I think I've got wildly off topic from your actual question.

I think getting older in many ways is realising that being 14 is a state of mind and that's just who you occasionally are for the rest of your life. So yeah, I think ageing does come with this element of derangement. I have a lot of thoughts about Jake as effectively this ageing child star, put on a pedestal on Earth-C at 16 and it becoming insidious, exploitative.

Jake is self aware of his lack of agency on a literal level within the narrative, perhaps even of the narrative itself-- like a gilded bird cage of his own making and he probably could slip out between the bars but then who would he be, where would he go, would everyone hate him and abandon him? He'll just stay trapped, stay prety on display, stay hurt until everyone probably leaves anyway because an audience is a very very fickle thing.

And I think that does sort of lead to an angle for me of Sunset Boulevard, tearing the yellow wallpaper, the starlet breakdown. Which is the depressing, almost Swift approach to it. And then you have the Ultimate Jake approach to it, the Snap. And yeah, I think historically Jake takes and takes and takes and bends and bends and bends and is called selfish for that and eventually that would snap anyone. If on top of that, he's aware of Dirk's actions and of the narrative, of being on display constantly even if he escapes that little bird cage, if the only way to ensure people stop fucking looking at him is to destroy the audience itself-- yes, I would accept that story as viable for his character.

[tipsygnostalgy]

EXCELLENT ADDITION. I'm going proper syntax mode as well.

I think this touches neatly on something I personally didn't incorporate into my essay—Jake's manipulation, which falls pretty neatly in-line with Ult. Jake later doing the same thing. The rather upsetting thing is, I'm not sure if I agree, at least not with Jake in canon.

For me, the angle I take with Jake is less 'smart as fuck manipulative genius' and more 'intuitive but uncertainty scares him so he ignores it.' I see the Jane confession (the disaster of a confession, 0/10, it's so perfect) cited as evidence pretty often for him having manipulated the situation, but I can't really see it. There's sections where he self-deprecates, and there's sections where he's being a complete fucking idiot, but it doesn't read as manipulation to me. I don't know, maybe I'm not looking close enough? Sure, pressuring someone into confessing whether they like you or not this directly would cause them to typically respond no, but does he know that? Does he recognize it? Or am I being gaslit by the funny pseudo-British man into believing what he wants me to believe? Half the fight here is deciding what sections to read into and discard, so I'm very much open to other evidence which I'm sure is out there.

Otherwise, I agree with my whole heart. Whether his behavior is "consciously" intentional or not, Jake still plays a rather active role in the situation at hand, albeit most of the time either accidentally or by proxy to the larger plot (assuming my point above is true, that is). And later, when he goes Ultimate, he'll start taking full responsibility for his manipulations by having them succeed or fail by virtue of Ult. Dirk.

Oh, and all the Alpha kids not being able to give the more emotional aspect of their aspect to themselves and suffering as a result is both based and unbelievably tragic. In line with popular opinion, I think Roxy being the one to rise above it (at least temporarily, considering [shudder] Trickster Mode) is perfect since I associate alcoholism with a lack of knowledge in Homestuck (Mom Lalonde's drinking problems causing her to emotionally neglect Rose, Rose's drinking problems causing her to forget dates and details, Terezi being entirely blindfolded and unconscious when engaging with soporifics), which in other words is a void of knowledge. For the Rogue of Void to steal that lack from herself is pretty satisfying and why I adore her as much as I do. The post-Trickster scene is incredible to me in the sense that they've just gone from a Complete High to what's now a Complete Low, full of regret and guilt and self-avoidance, and yet they talk to each other—over text. When they're sitting right next to each other. Because maybe things were better between them before all this happened.

Wow, that's emotional shit. Anyway, digressing back to more analysis territory, here's a fun idea I keep bouncing around. I can understand how Jake/Roxy/Dirk would end up the way they are, because growing up completely alone for sixteen years does that to a child. But what about Jane? Is it the canonical existence of the Condesce? Is it just her natural skepticism? Has the years of neuroticism displayed by the rest of her friends shifted her around? Of course there's her tendency to think she Knows Better and all, but why? It's a piece that doesn't fit smoothly in my brain, I wish self-lobotomies were invented way earlier.

Thank you again for this piece to gnaw on and I just know your essay's going to drive me insane. :3 <3

in writing my response to @tipsygnostalgy's most recent dirkjake essay post, i accidentally wrote my own mini-essay. here's a little sneak peak since i dunno if i'll be able to finish this one tonight:

I’ve been thinking a lot about what Dirk says to Jane during their conversation post-Tricksters (A6A5A1x2:5830):

TT: We were all designated for a session that was utterly inert. TT: A place where the mechanisms for success never even existed to begin with. TT: In such a place it makes sense that the formal leader would be neutralized, to made feel unempowered and static. TT: And it seems particularly fitting she would be the noble of life in a realm of the dead. TT: A realm that foretold of a life player who felt lifeless, a hope player who felt hopeless, and a heart player who was just a stone cold motherfucker.

I feel like this conversation gets misread a lot, particularly in that people will often ignore the fact that Dirk is clearly biased in terms of his praise/idolization of Roxy and disregard for/blatant hatred of himself. Because the thing is- Jake isn’t hopeless, if anything he’s fuckin overflowing with hope when it comes to believing in other people, it’s just that he completely lacks that same belief when it comes to himself. Act Omega really got that part right, imo, with the fact that Jake really does need the reassurance that other people (namely, Dirk) believe in him in order to be empowered to actually start being active. “Learned helplessness” is the idea that comes to mind for me, one of the key ways that Jake is put into the stereotypical “woman’s role” is in the fact that he feels like he can never be direct in getting what he wants. But actually, I think Jake is pretty active, he just does it in stupidly subtle ways so that he can avoid having to take responsibility for literally anything. That conversation with Jane, for example- he still manipulates Jane into friendzoning herself, therefore getting what he wants (Dirk), he just muddles the waters enough that he doesn’t have to take responsibility for hurting her by rejecting her.

I think Jane actually is thematically a good representative of the alphas, in the same way that John is for the betas (and really all kids, but Johnny is special cause he was #1), it’s just that you have to look at her class, not her aspect. Maids are typically understood as overflowing with their aspect, literally made of it, causing them to have a very close, personal relationship with it but also putting a strain on their relationship with others because of it. The word “maid” also brings to mind servitude to others, which is big for the Megidos & their history w/ Doc Scratch.

While Jane struggles a lot with giving (life) to others, I still think the Maid class really is relevant to all of the alphas, especially Dirk and Jake but also kinda Roxy. This is where I think Dirk is ever so slightly off in his interpretation of their session- it’s not that they’re lacking their aspect, they can’t stop giving it away in service of each other honestly, it’s that they can’t give the same help to themselves.

Jake fervently believes in his friends, he has to if he wants them to be real as you said above, and it’s ultimately all very selfish, but he cannot believe in himself to the point where he needs to create a fucking intricately detailed copy of his boyfriend to tell all of his thoughts to him before he can believe they’re true. Dirk is fucking overflowing with love for his friends, his introduction to the comic is making sure Jane is alright, he holds onto Roxy and seems to be almost as devastated as she is that he can’t love her the way that she wants him to, Jake, but he absolutely cannot give that same affection and sympathy to himself. Roxy holds the group together, yes, but I think it’s in a very different way than Karkat and his blood aspect- she is the confidant that everyone talks to and everyone can confide their secrets in (regardless of how well she keeps them- sorry Jane, lol), she is void in that she is the keeper of secrets but also in that, by getting people to communicate and giving them advice, she takes away the void/confusion and helps them see a better path. However she cannot hold her own secrets, doesn’t have anyone else to confide in in the way that she wants to (Dirk gets it but doesn’t love her that way, Jane doesn’t believe her, Jake) and passively aggressively lashes out because of it.

It’s their fundamental flaw and the motivation behind the lies in their introductions and their problems with miscommunication. They love each other so fucking dearly, care so agonizingly much about one another, but can’t deal with themselves, can barely even face a mirror. It's the void session: heart is locked off, hope is twisted into something strange, and life has already long-since ended. The reason why Roxy is able to rise above all that shit is because she chooses to engage with her own issues, to face her alcoholism and shitty behavior head on and Deal With It, in a way that the others simply aren’t.

[tipsygnostalgy]

I AM SITTING IN THE MIDDLE OF A *MEETING TRYING NOT TO IMPLODE RIGHT NOW. "mildly entertaining" i am amused as all cringlefuck this shits straight up bewitching to me

sorry im writing an ult dirkjake scene right now and "cringlefuck" is refusing to leave my brain anyway

i like your second take on why dirk insists that hal's not sentient because for him to accept that hal's made a better contribution than him is just so fucking miserable isn't it?? like in that case (much like beta dave) HAL isn't perfect either but he's still BETTER than dirk ykwim? like at that point it's purely dirk's fault that he's not enough and we all know what he'd rather do than accept that idea

and dirk's avoidance to negative emotion is very jake-englishian they're so important to each other god god!!!

i wish i could've incorporated roxykisser's classpect post more but i took one look at it and immediately realized if i ever tried that thing would never be fucking published so here's my follow up rant to that:

what i love about ultimate selves is that they tie into the character so inherently in the sense that the character becomes destroyed in the process of trying to merge them into one like dirk strider ceases to be One Dirk Strider hes now The Dirk Strider and if theres anything that ties together all the dirk striders in the universe it'd be the title of prince of heart because that's how deeply classpects are woven into these characters

this is why i think bgd escaped The Merging like he's fused partially with jake—he isn't just a prince of heart anymore but a secret third thing but i dunno it's a very inchoate idea

i also like to think arquiusprite (wherever he may be...) escaped the Merging too for that reason and maybe ult dirk encounters him later god i'd love for dirk to get an epic beatdown in which hal gets so fucking disappointed in him that it momentarily separates him from the merged state of spriteness and verbally annihilates him

finally just based on everything so far i think you'll very much enjoy my later takes on what ult dirk and ult jake would respectively look like in terms of romance and growth and i also look forward to your jake takes as well thank you for this incredible addition have a lovely night

@tipsygnostalgy HELLO HI UH THIS IS AN INCOMPLETE VERSION. i snipped out some bits because im throwing down anxiety in.the ring even posting this. im frankly a little embarrassed i can't give everything tonight even what i have down as okay to upload is not my top form at all, im just really really excitedaaaa i'll probably reblog the lovers post with a complete version eventually, but for now this is the best thanks i can offer for the nigh lethal dose of dopamine you've shot into my skull.

apologies in advance for my verbosity it's chronic

im posting dirk's half first because i definitely talked too much on jake's. it's almost double the length. i think it's partially because ive chewed through dirk so much i can make it through a considerable amount of his sections without dissolving completely. and i'm impatient!

note: my interactions with philosophy are limited to the two month bonanza i spent when i was 14 which i barely remember due to my general memory issues because my philosophy teacher was shit at his job and i took matters into my own hands, and uh. dirkjake! and one character from one other fandom. yeah. i am a nerd who loves breaking shit down, i love information, and i love philosophy nonetheless but i am So unqualified to be doing any of this

entry 1:

can i scream? i'm screaming. out loud. in real life. holy two fucks and a half. what do i even say it's So Good. dirk could excuse his inadequacy with the minute comfort that the brother he idolizes is functionally perfect in a way he could never conceivably live up to be. everything is shattered when he meets a version of him who is on the same footing. Yes. i literally have a post typed up about it.

im copypasting a small segment here but it's so close to exactly what you said im almost unnerved. mostly excited tho i am SHAKING

the most devastating thing to know is that dave is just a guy. dave strider, 16 year old. human and flawed and still enough in ways dirk never could be. what he did for his team his friends the things dirk couldn't, he is made to serve and no matter how hard dirk tries he cannot live up to be the same because this is not his role.

words? words. that's so much many words.

this is not his class. he is doomed to be selfish, his thread is already in the tapestry and he falls right into the path no matter how much he fights it. what can be counted as him indirectly the plot was created at the service/detriment to himself (hal) and what is himself directly aiding his party is in fact orchestrated by other more helpful, more selfless people and he hates it so much.

YES IT'S EXACTLY THAT RIGHT THERE RIGHT RIGHT THERE dirk is so so So aware that he is selfish that he cannot help the people he cares about oh so deeply and the knowledge that dave on his own, after being hurt so much "more" than dirk direct abuse he was able to pull through, he was still enough. shit man !!!!!!!

funnily enough i think dirk might have been able to learned new skills to do with his classpect besides the passive narrative bend it has on everything he does to destroy. this is entirely theory but your classpect and your development with it helps you develop as a person. it's like a muscle if you think about it; the more you use it, the closer you get to its core, the more you learn to bend ithad he tried to use it (resisting the urge to say like dave did because that will stomp on the shattered pieces of my heart) i think he would have gotten a bit more control over his position in the narrative if it makes sense.

ironically, i think learning how to direct the destructice force his classpect gives him might have allowed him to get a hold on said narrative bending, and stop unintentionally wrecking shit. but doing Anything as a prince is the last thing dirk wants.

(god it's so tragic this theory is so tragic without it dirk was always doomed to the inevitable but with it he could have done better in his eyes nevermind that destruction of selves isn't always bad if you know how to direct it, see bgd @ aranea, but it literally requires him to take the path he's trying to hard to fight. you define how your classpect changes you. oh dirk.)

i think a lot about this if you can't tell

FUCK IM GETTING OFF TRACK. STOP OKAY CAN THE THEORIES FUCK.

[insert 2 paragraphs more of me screaming about the katana line hally lieu yeah]

entry 2:

HAL MY FAVOURITE KENTUCKY FRIED FUCKER HELLOOOO HELLO OOHOHOGO

god my old hyperfixation on deep learning models is coming back to bite me in the jungular. delightful slash gen

dirk does love his control mhmm mhmm god im gonna go dig up that picture my friend sent me once one sec

that's who he wants to be. so badly

he Hates not understanding shit prides himself on being the (im quite sure it's part of how he gauges his use. he has a very utilitarian view on it. being the one to pull the strings thus being useful by virtue of organizing their success. proceeds to eat gcatshit trying)

i think a part of why dirk insists so fucking much that hal is Not him and Not alive could be one of two 2 reasons, beyond the already tangled pumpkin patch of conflict.

1) not taking credit for hal's contributions. the fact that hal has served the team without dirk's direct orders + dirk's objective pride about being the puppetmaster, he wouldn't want this tied to him

i doubt this one honestly, it's incoherently explained on its own because it's really late but also it just there's a lot of holes in the logic here. the second one breaks my heart a little:

2) if he accepts hal to be sentient, he has to accept he has created a new conscious person. he cannot cling to any notion that he did help his friends, he created an intelligent AI and that tool he made in turn was used to aid and guide his friends. he is still in control here. he still helped, he built that bot and it helped.

right?

[cutoff point 2. im rushing. im so sorry ajsjaj]

entry 3:

killing me

"He likes emotion, he likes people, he just wants to be completely perfect when interacting with them so that he’ll never lose them." YES. YES. YES YES YES yes okay yes exactly Yes

this is one of the things i headbutt against in dirk fandom stuff a lot (even borzoi's take once i think correct me if im wrong) it's the fact that i think dirk likes people. he's been alone his whole life yet he delights in dialectics and dialogue, he's socially awkward and introverted but he's not socially averse. i am not gonna let myself run over the hills and far away with this tangent but i am hushdhsj AAAAA

what he doesn't like is feeling inadequate interacting with people. he doesn't like being inadequate in general he reflects on his flaws near constantly and the biting reminder of his alternate selves' sins in the back of his mind doesn't help, but with people he Cares About interacting with them he does not like not knowing what to do, he does not like being unable to navigate these situations. he likes being human and experiencing emotions and connection and he hates the fact that it requires error to the trials, he just wants to be entirely logical while still having a metaphorical right brain totally not a big thing to ask for ahshdhskjrh[explodes]

AHAAAAA SISYPHUS YYYES YES YRS EYSBEYDHHWHEHSHEHD FUCK YES oh man i am much more a theatrical literature person so this is ringing off bells in the wrong direction than intended but im reading reading reading chewing

"upon facing the question of the absurd in the fullest extent, one can either choose to kill themselves or make a ‘reply.’" hogh

two roads: become god, or kill yourself. jesus fuck that's a screwed up twitter thread if ive seen one. and of course he picks the secret third option: Both. absolute DiStri Moment™

fuckitweballkind that's joining my regular vocabulary holy shit your language is amazing

this feels like an extension of dirk's dilemma between subjective experience with objective control; coming to grapple with the unpredictability of his absurdist existence and his solution being to take control of the narrative entirely. i feel like there are a lot more dots i could connect here. i will sleep on this

[addition i feel is important even though it has minimal connection as of right Now:

roxykisser put out something about classpects and the ult self being the literal narrative very recently and how they tie into the narrative and it's That it's that. my take is partly influenced by past fandoms but it has always ruined me that in order to god tier, quite literally, you're killing the person you were before the embrace the narrative role. you the actor are giving up your freedom to the performance, and the closer you get to your classpect the more you embrace the narrative. in return, you gain more flexibility and control in said narrative, more ways to use your classpect. to become the ult self is to become the role. you kill the person, you become the role, but at the cost of your self, your mind may be driven by the consciousness of an amalgamation of every You, but your core is now your role.

im incorporating and altering this with my consumption]

really hope this is like at least mildly entertaining i have no idea what im doing but!!!! I Am So Abnormal About Everything i love this i love you i love love this so Much

[tipsygnostalgy]

confession. i didn't emphasize enough on just how debilitating of a situation this is for jake, thereby falling into a very fun but unfortunate cliché surrounding jake english: to turn him into a god so that dirk strider can be saved.

like sure he's hoping for dirk. and because of that hope it's going to happen eventually. but that also means that he can't ever have a GUARANTEE that dirk is going to be slightly less neurotic about the narrative—the moment he considers it a guaranteed outcome means he stops "hoping" and that fucks everything up. to never give up hope means to never stop doubting the outcome, to always have a voice in the back of his head asking whether he thinks this is going to work out. is he enough for that? is he enough for dirk? will he ever be? you don't ever know with him whether it's lord or jake english speaking, and that's the point, but the tragedy of the situation also comes from the fact that dirk doesn't know either. dirk's spent his entire life chasing after the sliver of hope that jake would get his shit together, and now the tables have turned; he's always wished jake could be this perfect godsent being capable of curing everything with hope, but now that jake's finally reached it, it feels empty—because it is. this is the same persona jake was putting on for the sake of earth c's jake english fandom except a hundred times worse, because somewhere along the line dirk lost the privilege of looking beyond the curtains. but to recognize jake as a flawed individual—to face the fact that maybe, just maybe, jake's still the fucked up sixteen year old he's been for a very long time and this is all an attempt by on his end to bite the bullet for dirk's sake—means dirk actively abandons the possibility that he's going to be cured by jake english. to recognize jake english and ultimate jake as separate means to recognize dirk strider and ultimate dirk as separate. and that just won't work out.

this mirrors the dynamic between early dirkjake, where jake thought dirk was going to save him and dirk had to live up to that; it's now jake putting up all the fronts he can to stop being perceived by dirk as anything less than perfect, because the moment he starts being human to him again is when the magic of the show breaks and the immersion is gone. he's trying to compensate for how pathetic he was in the past by being anything but. god. and dirk would know this, at least subconsciously, because eventually dirk broke from it, didn't he? where's the guarantee that jake won't break either, especially now that dirk is far less willing to cave to the idea that things could be okay between them if he just tried? so does he cave, does he trust, or does he break out of it again? and how much longer will jake english persist? it's telling that lord english jake's costume involves concealing his eyes as well—through movie glasses, none the less.

it could be fun for jake to be the first one to break down. it could be equally as fun for jake to not break down at all, but considering the knowledge of jake's background dirk has, i don't think an actual level of trust could ever be repaired between them until he does. you're telling me that not only jake's reaction to his once-best-friend's suicide is long-term contempt towards mankind, but that dirk can't see through this shit at first glance? i can see it being an impulsive decision, but that at best, and eventually i think it'd melt into this weird mixture between guilt and determination and hope tying him together.

I'm not a good person, I'm barely a person at all, but some day I'll be perfect and I'll make up for it all.

to be relatively clear, i don't think he'd be like this all the time to everyone (i.e. john and karkat), but he sure as hell would be around dirk. jake has become unknowable to dirk. that's against, like, the entire fucking point.

from an analysis standpoint, here's where things get wonky. an adventurer doesn't give a shit, and that's the point, but that's also not who jake english is. this would fit narratively neatly if jake started out as an adventurer and over-time realized he actually Does Feel Things all over again, but i doubt that out of all people candy john and commander karkat would be convinced to ditch their current responsibilities and take a nosedive adventure unless it was for people, just like how kanaya takes the ship to find rose again (apparently???). maybe jake lies to them first, makes up some sob story about dirk and how they could save them if they tried, and later finds out that he actually wasn't lying at all, but would Karkat Vantas be incapable of telling when jake is lying about a strider? this does fit with the lovers in the sense that to become free, the adventurer has to both save himself and others. my gripes with the essay is the lovers section ended on a fucking positive note as if it was as simple as "freedom!!!! :)" and it could have benefited from an extra few thousand words on exactly how tragic they are. i'll probably be re-writing the lovers section entirely in the future or taking it off the internet until i do because it's honestly kind of humiliating. anyway, thanks for listening [tips hat].

finally figured out why my dirkjake analyses didn't sit right with me and i'm fucking exploding

[tipsygnostalgy]

I'm going to put out something more coherent in the near future, but have you considered the analogy of the line & the sun to separate out Rose and Terezi's powers?

warning really fucking long post ahead again

THE ANALOGY OF THE SUN; Sun/Light vs. Mind

ok i cant be coherent about this atm but here are some notes i took

just because you have working eyes doesn’t mean you can see—you need light, which comes from the sun.

similarly, a mind can’t see truth on its own—light of truth/reality must allow for real knowledge. without such light, the “darkness” (aka beliefs rather than knowledge) is all you have.

THE ANALOGY OF THE LINE;

Seer of Mind and Seer of Light would both stand in the visible realm of knowledge (C & D, if you're familiar with the illustration of it) but Rose engages in some form of global skepticism and starts with doubt of everything at her very beginning—which, before she's able to engage in a much more healthier form of philosophy, leads to existentialist anguish and ergo Grimdark Rose. To my memory Grimdark Rose appears when she's at a moment of doubt regarding everything there is to know, having just learned that her Mom is dead and the Horrorterrors are (surprise) terrible—she's having that realization Descartes had in his little fire-lit cabin, except she doesn't have three armies and a formal edcuation's worth of experience to neatly declare cogito ergo sum and move on with her life. (Not that Descartes doesn't have his own critiques, with one of my favorites being this quick little piece by Mary Midgley.) She instead dies as a result—and then, in a moment of probably incidental thematic brilliance, her death as a result of global skepticism leads to her God-tier ascension into a fully-fledged Seer of Light. She is at the truest knowledge could possibly be—she's started with a doubt of everything, apparently figured something out amidst that, and now she's able to see the world for what it is. Thus her role as a Seer of Light falls within segment D, or noesis, meaning "knowing."

Seer of Mind, on the other hand, belongs in the "C"/dianoia ("thinking") category, in which one attempts to make sense of the material world but fails to understand that their abstract concepts aren't material of themselves (if I'm reading it correctly). An easier way to say it is that those who achieved dianoia are able to draw conclusions and infer using critical thinking/logic, but they can't realize that their logical systems could potentially be put into doubt. The example I can recall is a mathematician using numbers in diagrams to explain the world while taking the very idea of "numbers" for granted—in this sense, Terezi takes logic itself for granted when attempting to See what 'X' individual's next course of action will be, and that's why she doesn't end up God-tiering.

ARISTOTLE, CHANCE, AND VRISREZI:

So, what does taking "logic for granted" mean? Well, in terms of Homestuck, it means she's not accounting for Luck—something intrinsically tied with the Light element by virtue of a certain Vriska Serket. Aristotle goes on for a long time about the Four Causes of a certain thing and whether "chance" should be counted as a cause or not, and in that process separates out the difference between "chance" and "spontaneity"—while spontaneity encompasses everything that doesn't happen as a direct cause from someone, including Literal Randomness, chance involves direct agents/choices. So it was spontaneity that Gamzee happened to continue freaking the fuck out immediately after Terezi realized Aranea's mind control was relinquished—in the non-"you're responsible for literally and ultimately and fundamentally everything" sense—, though there's debate to be had on how much agency Gamzee has over his freakouts.

And one of her most iconic quotes, "We make our own luck," is delivered immediately before a feat on John's end that can be interpreted as extraordinarily lucky (do NOT get me started on John Egbert & Sartrean freedom, I will fucking implode)—of course, Terezi writes out individual courses of action for John to make by tapping into her abilities as a Seer of Mind (Seer of Logic/Decision; out of all the possible decisions made, what would work out?) but John's deviance from the instructions working out is luck. What makes this scene especially special, though, is that it's the closest Terezi gets to a God-tier mentality—she's recognizing in some sense that if you see enough steps/choices ahead, you can influence the chance of how things turn out, but she fails because she doesn't account for spontaneity.

Vriska acknowledges both spontaneity and chance, and through this she ascends to God-tier; she removes the chance that Tavros acts in a way that's different to her plans by mind-controlling him.... [TO BE CONTINUED].

(i.e. my laptop is at nine fucking percent im leaving this off for another day)

"quick" reflection on intelligence in homestuck:

i've been thinking about this a lot lately, especially in conjunction with my john post, so i just wanted to make a little reflection about it.

this is going to be relevant to a greater wip post on dirk strider & plato more generally, but i'm going to phrase all of this within the terms of the allegory of the cave (and more generally the metaphysics plato talks about in books v-vii of the republic) for clarity.

SO, if you somehow you missed out, here is the basics of the allegory of the cave: within the metaphor, a bunch of people are chained to the ground with their backs to the entrance of this cave, unable to look anywhere other than directly in front of them. behind their backs is a fire, and between that fire and the people there is a line of puppet masters holding up puppets reflecting real life objects that are then projected onto the walls of the cave for the chained people to see.

at some point, for some reason, a person (namely, a philosopher) will be dragged out from their chains, kicking and screaming, to the mouth of the cave and tossed into the real world. there they will be met by a number of new objects to perceive, all vastly different from the shadows on the walls that they had previously been seeing. instead of the shadow of a horse, they'll see a whole ass real horse, out in the daylight and everything, though first they might have to come to terms with seeing a reflection of that horse in water. essentially their perception of the world will blow their fuckin mind but by the end of it they'll totally love this new world of light and real actual objects and never want to leave it.

at some point though, they'll be obligated to come back and join the others in the cave once again. coming back down they might struggle to word exactly what it is that they saw outside of the cave, or may be laughed off by the people who have only ever seen shadows and only ever understand shadows, but because they have that knowledge, it is now their duty to lead the others, at least for a little while, before they can go back into that bright, sunny world again.

there are a ton of ways that this story can be relevant in homestuck, and i do wanna get into that at some point in the future (e.g. the puppets, light as knowledge w/ rose, plato's elitism especially w/ regards to the philosopher ruler, etc.) but for now to focus on intelligence:

there are two types of intelligence in homestuck, which can in the terms of plato's cave allegory be categorized as knowledge of the Forms (or the "true" intelligence that you gain by leaving the cave) and knowledge of the Mimics/Imitations (or the intelligence you gain by watching the shadows on the wall). note that plato gets hells of into talk about imitations around ehh books ii-iii i believe but also especially in book x right at the very end, mostly in his criticisms of the works of hesiod/homer (also yes this is related to the mimesis shit from detective pony).

in homestuck terms, these categories can be described as knowledge of the world and knowledge of the World, or actual knowledge of how real life things work vs. knowledge about the meta structure of homestuck as a comic and how the fictional world functions (the game rules, you could say). interestingly, meta knowledge about the world of the comic as a story seems to be privileged here, which perhaps makes sense since it feels more significant for a fictional character to be aware of details about their own story. to give an example that might help: this is knowledge about computers (understanding the shadows) vs. knowing that the laws of the world they live in is based around computers (understanding the Forms, or the origin of reality).

what this means is that characters designated as intelligent in homestuck can also be split along the same lines according to which kind of knowledge they have, which of course can change over time as well. take jade, for example: she is just generally quite smart in that she understands a lot of physics and quantum mechanics science-y shit, but also by the fact that she has access to some greater Knowledge at the start of her arc through the visions she gets from prospit. dirk is intelligent in the shadow-knowledge sense because he understands the history of humanity leading up to its eventual death at the hands of HIC, but seems to struggle a lot more to access that greater Knowledge, which i think is actually shown a lot more in the post-canon stuff w/ all of the ultimate self shit. jake on the other hand might be lacking intelligence in terms of shadow-knowledge (maybe, it's kinda hard to tell, actually- i would say this is true just because he doesn't seem to care all that much about studying in the same way dirk does) but he at least subconsciously is frighteningly aware of how the World works, as seen here (A6A3:4928):

JAKE: The demon you say im supposed to defeat? ARANEA: Yes. JAKE: Hang on. JAKE: Would that be the same demon im named after? ARANEA: Who told you that? JAKE: Uh... JAKE: I guess technically my own brain did? ARANEA: That's interesting. ARANEA: I wasn't planning on mentioning that. Or at least not just yet.

the most straightforward example here though is rose, who through her status as a seer of light just so so so perfectly fits into having knowledge of the Forms. the association in the original text of the republic of light and Forms knowledge fits this perfectly too.

one caveat to this view of intelligence is that it doesn't necessarily account for emotional intelligence, which i would actually put in a fully separate category that karkat obviously fuckin rules over (and roxy, to some degree). what's important though is that this structure separates out the intelligence of Omniscient/semi-omniscient beings (doc scratch, hal, kinda calliope but ehh i'll get to that) from normal super-smart kid intelligence, which is key when trying to analyze what characters are actually aware of, and from that, what we can actually trust when it comes to analyzing homestuck's lore. we really can't forget here that homestuck is a story told almost entirely through dialogue and conversations meaning that pretty much all lore comes through potentially biased narrators, something that is especially true for the alpha kids but really applies to pretty much everyone. sometimes the story will hint at knowledge that we can trust as fact straight up, i.e. rose explaining how dead/void sessions work in A6I2, but this is definitely not always the case and personally i think it helps a lot w/ analysis to be able to be aware of this.

anyways, some interesting cases that come out of this view:

calliope: calliope technically has knowledge of the Forms through how she is basically just a reader of homestuck, but because of that very same perspective she's also not a fully trustworthy narrator since 1. her version of the story is explicitly heavily redacted, and 2. she's in the same position as the audience in trying to piece everything together, meaning that all of her "lore" is really just theories that she's put together herself

terezi: i'm not sure what to make of mind as an aspect, especially in conjunction to light. i'm actually inclined to say this is, like, knowledge of shadows Plus since a lot of what we see w/ terezi is basically just knowledge of every possible timeline? maybe it would be better to put knowledge of aspects into a subcategory of knowledge of Forms, since aspects are kinda like laws of the fictional universe. the fact that mind is specifically put as complementary to heart (and therefore souls/identity) is also a really interesting idea and i wanna explore that more, it's such a weird aspect especially when you have light and all of its connotations right there

gamzee: gamzee's whole breakdown is basically just him gaining knowledge of the Forms and getting pissed about it (getting dragged out of the cave and not being happy with the world he sees) but i almost feel like there should be more to this since clowns are so fucking weird in general w/ all of the meta shit. it almost feels wrong to call gamzee a character after his icp-induced mind break, he loses his personality so strongly to the point of just becoming a fuckin plot device.

in conclusion: i need to talk more about dirk strider. LATER later

[tipsygnostalgy]

okay, not to be insane and bonkers about crazyexdirkfriend's tags but yeah. 100%. it's that stupid age old question of how much is the character and how much is the audience; what parts of this are just my desire to see these two happy and how much of it is based in canon; how far can i take my analysis and interpretation before it diverges irrevocably from the source i'm tapping from; most fanfiction is just the author's wish fulfillment (most fandom culture is imo, and homestuck does a fantastic job of delivering jabs at us) but how do i know i'm not taking it too far; maybe the real mutation of homestuck was the fic writers we found along the way; how do you stay true to the characters while fucking around with canon, &c &c. i could question this until i turn blue, but all i'm accepting for now is that sometimes i'm writing and i can feel the ghost of dirk fucking strider reading over my shoulder and killing me on the spot and that's how i know i'm doing something wrong. i will think about this for several days.

but on a MUCH less moralizing note, who the fuck cares? don't let some asshole's 16px Adobe Garamond Pro #f2a400/(242, 164, 0) loser meta-commentary stop you from writing and creating whatever wish fulfillment i want dirk strider to just rescued jake you want to. the world's your oyster, and it just so happens that constantly strangling my internal perception of these scrunkly fuckers makes me happy as a clam, so that's what i'm up to most of the time. thank you for the neat tag additions tumblr user @/crazyexdirkfriend very cool. :3

finally figured out why my dirkjake analyses didn't sit right with me and i'm fucking exploding

[tipsygnostalgy]

@crazyexdirkfriend insane

finally figured out why my dirkjake analyses didn't sit right with me and i'm fucking exploding

[tipsygnostalgy]

YOU ARE SO GOOD! im going on proper syntax mode for this forgive my lack of coherency im losing my mind

ON THE STRANGER, TOTAL NIHILISM, AND CALIBORN:

Regarding The Stranger and total nihilism, I'll have to admit that I'm only halfway through the actual novel, but here's my inchoate takes on the subject. Let's start with a quote from The Myth of Sisyphus.

A stranger to myself and to the world, armed solely with a thought that negates itself as soon as it asserts, what is this condition in which I can have peace only by refusing to know and to live, in which the appetite for conquest bumps into walls that defy its assaults? To will is to stir up paradoxes. pg20

So from the beginning, we can see the penultimate flaw of the stranger—he has recognized that thought often negates itself, but his genius solution is simply to "stop thinking." This can be demonstrated through Caliborn's intentional ignorance towards things other people very clearly tell him, his commandeering nature, or (hear me out) his syntax.

In Matthew Ward's Translator's Notes, he comments that the extremely broken flow of PART ONE in The Stranger was an intentional feature on Camus' end. He therefore kept that short, choppy, "show" sentence flow of the novel in his works, ultimately kicking off the novel with this gem of a line:

Maman died today. Or yesterday maybe. I don't know. pg1

And until the last few pages of P1, this "American" way of writing continues (another writer who does this a lot is Vonnegut in Breakfast of Champions). The main character, who I will affectionately deem the Stranger, observes everything from an outsider's lens—even his own mother's death and a proposal from his lover—, only very rarely commenting on something that gives direct insight into him. In fact, his dialogue isn't even conveyed with quotation marks until 42 pages into the novel, where his lover tells him marriage is serious and he replies:

I said, "No." pg42

Over and over again the Stranger demonstrates that he simply doesn't care about the things that happen to him: he considers himself passive, he's an observer, and he thinks "it [is] all the same to him." The quote that truly ties the Stranger back to total nihilism is this: "...people never change their lives, that in any case one life was as good as another and that I wasn't dissatisfied with mine here at all." He further writes that he once did have ambition, but when he was forced to quit his studies "[he] learned very quickly that none of it mattered."

In this sense, I think you're correct about Caliborn's connection to total nihilism—in fact, incidentally, a grand majority of the sentences written in part one read exactly like what Caliborn would say. Caliborn (from what I recall) plays a highly specific observer, the one who is "above it all," and as you say yourself he refuses a meaningful relationship with his sister. Though you could interpret his rampage as "passion" towards a specific something, I'm having trouble identifying what exactly that passion is. For now, I'd propose Caliborn as somewhat of an adventurer himself, specifically the tyrant who seeks to destroy everything in his desire for entertainment. The sadism Caliborn carries towards the rest of the world is almost unparalleled in scope (though maybe except Dirk for himself, which later translates to Ult. Dirk fucking everything up (but personal!)). Both Ult. Jake & Lord English are tyrants. Think about how neat that could be.

It would then make sense where Caliborn's early admiration for Dirk would stem from, because these archetypes have rankings, and on that ladder both the adventurer and critic fall lower than the passionate man (whether Dirk can be considered a full passionate man before his Ult-ing, or whether he's more of a serious man, is a whole other skeleton in his closet).

ON NIETZCHE, CAMUS, BEAUVOIR & THE ALPHA KIDS:

Nietzche is highly individualistic, that much I'd have to agree even without the full breadth of knowledge I should probably have, and Beauvoir does disagree. In my opinion, both The Ethics of Ambiguity and The Myth of Sisyphus can be read as responses to common criticisms against existentialism. While Camus tackles the meta take of "hey if nothing has inherent meaning doesnt the search for meaning have no inherent meaning :3" by essentially asking "do you want me to kill myself be honest," Beauvoir dissents to the accusation that existentialism promotes solipsism (in this context meaning ‘the view or theory that the self is all that can be known to exist’), and a lack of behavior as a result; she elaborates not only a course of action for the individual man to take, but a criticism against certain government structures promoting individualism as a whole, with American “‘enlightened’ capitalism"” being a prime example.

The trick of “enlightened” capitalism is to make him forget about his concern with genuine justification, offering him, when he leaves the factory where a mechanical job absorbs his transcendence, diversions in which this transcendence ends by petering out: there you have the politics of the American employing class which catches the worker in the trap of sports, “gadgets,” autos, and frigidaires. pg87-88

The end goal of her existentialism has never been to simply accuse the world of being without meaning—the concept of utmost and utter freedom, responsibility delegated to yourself no matter what, was not an attempt to isolate ourselves as individuals, but to recognize that to work for our own transcendence we must work for others’ as well. These two quotes sum it up perfectly:

As we have seen, my freedom, in order to fulfill itself, requires that it emerge into an open future: it is other men who open the future to me, it is they who, setting up the world of tomorrow, define my future; but if, instead of allowing me to participate in this constructive movement, they keep me below the level which they have conquered and on the basis which new conquests will be achieved, then they are cutting me off from the future, they are changing me into a thing. pg82

To want existence, to want to disclose the world, and to want men to be free are one and the same will. pg87

But the thing is, not many people in Homestuck gets this, and especially-fucking-not the Alpha kids. Dirk takes a more pre-absurdist lens with life—he acknowledges the meta take that life has no meaning and meaning has no meaning, but classic to a guy who only ever acknowledges the meta and never attempts to transcend it for-itself, he leaves it at that: the world's meta, there's a narrative, everyone pack it up and go home. But as you point out yourself, this is only natural—it's really hard to adopt "unity!! empathy!!" as a value when you've only ever grown up with you, your puppets, and an idolized version (hint hint) of everybody you have any connection with. I've already waxed poetic about Jake, and both Roxy and Jane deserves more than a footnote, so I'll shove them all off in a neat potential box for later.

(P.S. a quick note: Roxy might be the true Stranger-turned-absurdist, especially with alcoholism being associated with a lack of willingness to "know"/See—Terezi's sopor & Rose's drinking problem—and the Stranger's transformation in PART TWO. Which I'll have to read.)

P.S.-P.S. You know who might maybe understand Beauvoir, though? Karkat Vantas. But I'll have to re-read Homestuck to find evidence in laying out the logic.

OTHER POTENTIAL TOPICS:

Beauvoir's commentary on science and it's connection to the "science-y" types in Homestuck, especially about Hal & Dirk, based on this quote:

Science condemns itself to failure when, yielding to the infatuation of the serious, it aspires to attain being, to contain it, and to possess it; but it finds its truth if it considers itself as a free engagement of thought in the given, aiming, at each discovery, not at fusion with the thing, but at the possibility of new discoveries; what the mind then projects is the concrete accomplishment of its freedom. pg79

Dirk Strider and Plato, especially concerning The Republic's full Cave allegory, and the fact that some of Plato's best works (Crito/Apology/&c) are written in play format.

MY CURRENT TAKE ON THE "WHO WOULD LEAVE" QUESTION:

I think it would be Jake. I might get fired from my lab if they catch me on Tumblr instead of strangling python, though, so I'll save this rant for another day. Thank you for this lovely addition, your brain is so huge, and please tell me more about Nietzsche vs. Beauvoir. God. I'm so insane about them.

DirkJake & Beauvoir: An Existential Analysis

posting this here again because i am insufferable and this is currently my magnum opus 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vTIEpH7wYe9_PWNu7sqk_HlmjpEnNMkDzA9S2QdaJp4rXi6_O2fovQ3RB0fJ6y0aTjNgQDU9E76Bbem/pub

jk i’m working on something about the kid guardians right now!! not all the ideas are there but it’s rotating in my brain very often so it’ll come at some point